Welcome to our latest installment to our Civil War Rewind series, where we note important events from the War Between the States, 150 years after they occurred.. Take a peek out the window today - it's pretty beautiful, isn't it? Well, Springtime isn't just time for planting flowers and riding bicycles. Back in the old days, it was time for moving armies - at least for most people it was... Hence, we have our installment for today.
Like we mentioned last Summer, after Irvin McDowell was routed at Manassas, he was replaced by George McClellan. Also known as Little Mac or Little Napoleon, McClellan was a master at training troops. He was widely loved by his men for displaying faith in them, and helped make the Union army what it was. But, two things plagued him: his aversion to actually fighting, and his inane sense of overestimating the size of his opponents. Think about it.. Manssas was fought in July, so it had been 8 MONTHS since McClellan took command, he amassed an army of 125,000 men - and he didn't go anywhere with them.
Naturally, this didn't go over well with Abraham Lincoln. Numerous times, he wired McClellan with any plans to attack, and McClellan would make excuses: they were not ready, the weather was bad, but mostly, it was McClellan's repeated miscalculations of the size of the Southern army of Gen. James Johnston. McClellan often guessed Johnston was man for man even with him, when in truth, he only had about 60-75,000 men. Both Lincoln and McClellan were running out of patience... McClellan often referred to Lincoln as a Gorilla or Baboon, while Lincoln stated that if McClellan was unwilling to use his army, he might like to borrow it for a while. On March 11, 1862 , Lincoln had enough...
He chose a general with moderate success from the West - Gen. John Pope. His job in the West was to mainly keep the Mississippi River clear for Union movement in Missouri. He won small battles in New Madrid and Island 10. Not the biggest resume to promote a man to head of all eastern operations, but keep this in mind.. The only other man to win battles was Ulysses Grant, and he had just been pulled from the field by his jealous commander, Henry Halleck. In short, there was no one else. Lincoln joked that Pope was like the Pope's he knew in Illinois - they were all liars and braggarts, but those weren't bad traits for a general. At least that's what he thought then..
With Pope in command, McClellan was still in charge of his actual force, just not in charge of all troops in the East. When McClellan finally made a plan, Pope Ok'd it. It was known as the Peninsula Campaign that started in April, 1862 - and it was a partial disaster... The plan was to SHIP troops onto the James River peninsula, then race up to Richmond and catch the capital from the back door, rather than from the North. They got into Virginia, but everything went wrong from there....
For starters, the rains came. Many roads were impassable, which kind of confirms McClellan's reticence to fight just yet... It got worse. Maps that they got were horribly incorrect. Add to that the fact that you're fighting with a river on one side of you, and you're almost pinned in. Crossing rivers was no picnic back then. Worst of all, there was no element of surprise - The Confederates knew they were coming..
Johnston's problem was what do you do when you're outmanned 50000 men? Easy.. You make it seem like you have 50000 more than you do, and it worked brilliantly. The South worked their butts off, often travelling 30 miles a day, flanking all around the Union army and attacking with small artillery bursts. It confused McClellan, and as usual, it made him think the size of the army was much more than he actually had in front of him. The Union would delay, and when they finally did, they found no one. The race up the peninsula was a slow crawl, and it branded McClellan with the sarcastic nickname of The Virginia Creeper. It took almost two months for him to trek the 100 miles to Richmond, about a mile and a half a day. That is creeping ....
The Spring of 1862 begins one of the lower periods of the Civil War for the North, and the year a slew of legends are made for the South. It made Abraham Lincoln reverse course, and make him think he made a mistake in canning McClellan - but we'll get to all that later. In the East, Spring dawned a brief scare, then the highwater mark for the South, and nothing but constant disappointment for the North - and it happened 150 years ago this week! We'll be back with another post in a few weeks, as we've covered a lot of ground today. Thanks again, and keep checking for more posts...
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